Addicted to You by Krista and Becca Ritchie
Genre: Realistic Fiction/Romance
Blurb (on back of book): Fans of Gossip Girl, Friends, and Euphoria will devour this edgy new adult romance set in a world of lust, fame, swoon-worthy men, and friendships that run deeper than blood.
She’s addicted to sex. He’s addicted to booze…the only way out is rock bottom.
No one would suspect shy Lily Calloway’s biggest secret. While everyone is dancing at college bars, Lily stays in the bathroom. To get laid. Her compulsion leads her to one-night stands, steamy hookups and events she shamefully regrets. The only person who knows her secret happens to have one of his own.
Loren Hale’s best friend is his bottle of bourbon. Lily comes at a close second. For three years, they’ve pretended to be in a real relationship, hiding their addictions from their families. They’ve mastered the art of concealing flasks and random guys that filter in and out of their apartment.
But as they sink beneath the weight of their addictions, they cling harder to their destructive relationship and wonder if a life together, for real, is better than a lie. Strangers and family begin to infiltrate their guarded lives, and with new challenges, they realize they may not just be addicted to alcohol and sex.
Their real vice may be each other.
MY OPINION: **
I was sadly not a fan of this book and found it to be quite boring and underwhelming. I was super excited to start this series because I've heard countless good things about it from so many different people and I was told it would fit my favorite reading niches perfectly. However, I personally wasn't a fan and was very disappointed with my reading experience with this book.
The main issue for me was the heavy emphasis on a toxic relationship with barely any commentary on the possible damaging emotional and physical effects it could have. Obviously, this is a romance novel and isn't some sort of self-help, relationship-therapy sort of book, but I am never a fan of books that glamorize extremely toxic relationships without any sort of acknowledgement to how bad these relationships can be. Now, I cannot deny I've read several books with fairly glorified toxic relationships and rated them highly despite some personal misgivings but something about this one in particular did not sit well with me.
Lily and Loren are childhood friends who are both addicted to certain vices to an extreme level. Loren is an alcoholic, dependent on heavy liquor to survive each day. Lily is a sex addict, which I've never read about before. One thing I did like about this book was the willingness to explore the differences and similarities between these two addictions and giving readers insight into how horrible it must be to live with these addictions every single day of your life. I especially found Lily's addiction interesting because, like I said, I'd never seen that in a book before. It wasn't some raunchy, sickening, erotic sort of glorification, thankfully, and instead we really see the nuances and horrible effects of such a rare and less common addiction. People treat her addiction as lesser because it isn't as common and there are a lot of misconceptions about sex addictions that I learned a lot about in this book.
However, my main issue with this book was the fact that Lily and Loren constantly enabled each other's addictions and did not seem to think twice about it until told by others that maybe it wasn't okay. I think there are different levels of toxicity in romantic relationships, but this one seemed to surpass the more common toxic red flags and instead focused on literally promoting the addiction of the other person in the relationship and vice versa.
One thing that is super important when entering into any sort of romantic relationship is the ability to be okay with yourself and who you are at that moment in time. I did not see Lily or Loren to have reached that level of self-acceptance or self-actualization that you need to at least be working towards before entering a relationship. Instead, both of them are at almost rock bottom and see the other as a crutch to help aid in their endeavors to FEED their addictions, not get rid of them. Obviously, this is the entire point of the book but I couldn't stand reading about a book that tried so hard to make us ship LiLo or whatever their ship name is when it was clearly so wrong.
I loved the side characters in this book (for the most part). I found them to be the most helpful in giving us that commentary I was looking for in terms of enlightening Loren and Lily that maybe their relationship wasn't the most healthy or beneficial thing.
Rose, Lily's sister, is an icy, strong, determined woman, and I loved her. She was intelligent and independent and everything Lily wasn't. I wish we got see more of a gradual development in the sisterly bond between Rose and Lily because they both iced each other out a lot due to the many lies and secrets and passive competition between them. I loved Rose's relationship with Connor and it's quite honestly the only thing that makes me want to continue this series so that I can get to their book.
Ryke wasn't my favorite character (creep alert..!) but I liked how he acted as a Rose for Loren. He was committed to helping with Loren's addiction and was the only one who seemed to call him out for his problems without shame or fear. Everyone and their mother seems to be obsessed with this man but I found him to be annoying, asshole-ish, and creepy towards Lily's younger FIFTEEN YEAR OLD sister (this man is 22, I believe). I know he and Daisy have an ENTIRE book dedicated to their creepy relationship that everyone seems to love for some reason (like, come on guys, I thought we were all on the same page here about grooming) but it really incites a fierce level of nausea within me that makes me not want to continue this series.
On top of everything, I wasn't a fan of the writing style. At times, it read like a cheap soap opera and at others, it read like a YA rom-com. While I love YA, this book was clearly not YA and so reading in that style felt wrong. There were times when this book seemed to drag on and on and I wanted to put it down at times and just move on to another series.
Lily and Loren were just not it for me. I did not feel any love or chemistry between them, I was not swooning at their cheesy cringy lines, and I was not in support of their toxic relationship. I am currently undecided as to whether or not I want to continue this long, long, long series but I am motivated slightly by the Rose x Connor books (and I'm not necessarily sure I can skip ahead).
Would I recommend this book? I think if you are a fan of vaguely trashy romance with an interesting take on addiction and relationships, I would definitely say this is the one for you. However, for some reason, everyone loves this book on social media, so maybe take my words with a grain of salt. I wasn't a fan but I clearly am the outlier.
Main Character: Lily
Sidekick(s): Loren, Rose, Connor, Ryke, etc
Villain(s): Addiction, misunderstandings, alcohol, sex, etc
Realistic Fiction Elements: This book was all real to life.
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